Week of November 27, 2017

Students sharing excerpts from their personal narratives during our Writing Share on Wednesday.

Highlights from Last Week

• Science Fun! We began an investigation about Water on Earth, working in groups to create mini models of water on earth to see if we could discover what is needed to simulate how water cycles on the planet.
• To celebrate the completion of our personal narratives, we had a special writing share, complete with cool music and lighting. Students summarized their stories and shared short excerpts from them.
• Early in the week, students shared their Government in Outer Space homework projects. We listened to songs, chuckled at funny political advertisements, and were entertained by amusing story ideas about aliens in government. Check out some student work here.

What We Didn't Get To
Here is what didn't get covered:

• In Math, we didn't get to analyze our Game Strategies.

Upcoming Special Events

Monday, November 27th:

• Teacher Professional Development Day, No School for Students

Friday, December 1st:

• 5K Geography Bee -Start studying here!

Wednesday, December 6th:

• Early Release

Friday, December 8th:

• Pine Hill Geography Bee

Thursday, December 14th:

• Winter Chorus Concert

Please see the Pine Hill Calendar for more.


This Week's Plan

Special Activities

• Geography Bee --We conduct our class Geo Bee this Friday to determine a class winner. Students can practice here on the National Geographic Bee Website!

Reading
Unit:  Stories
Focus Areas:​​

• Summarize a Variety of Texts --focus on the main ideas and key details.
• Practice Summarizing --with teacher read aloud of There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar. 

Writing
Unit:  Narrative (finish)
Begin: Vocabulary Development
Focus Areas:​​

• Narrative On-Demand --Students will go through the writing process to write an on-demand personal narrative in 50 minutes, showing off their newly learned skills. We'll compare these stories to their initial on-demand narrative from the start if the unit.
• Navigating a Dictionary and Thesaurus --both print and online.
• Word Scale Project --find unfamiliar words that can more precisely describe a degree of something, such hot and cold or big and small.

Math
Unit 3: Fraction Concepts; Addition and Subtraction
Focus Areas:​​​

• Game Strategies --explain how to place digits in a division problem to get the largest possible quotient.
• Fraction Estimation --use fraction number sense to estimate and assess the reasonableness of answers to fraction addition and subtraction problems.
• Benchmark Fractions --use benchmarks to estimate sums and differences of fractions.
• Renaming Fractions --rename mixed numbers and fractions greater than 1 by composing and breaking apart wholes.

Social Studies
We take a break from Social Studies to focus on Science.


Science
Unit: Water on Earth

• Create a Model of Water on Earth --experiment with the elements that control how water cycles on Earth.
• Evaporation --explain how water evaporates and the factors that speed up evaporation.
• Collect Data and Analyze Results --during and after each investigation, we will learn how to record accurate and detailed data, as well as analyze the results of our investigations and apply them to real world scientific ideas.

Homework
Please see the Homework Page for more details. Students will need to do the following at home this week:

1. Homework Project: There is no new homework project this week. There is an in-class project called "Word Scale" that students may have to finish parts of at home.
2. Reading Response Blog: Students have a partner and must reply to their blog post #3. Due Friday, December 1st.
3. Independent Reading: Read 20 minutes each day, or 120 minutes total this week and log it in the planner.
4. Math: There will be a math page each night. 

Thanks for Reading!
So that's the plan for the week! Please feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or feedback.